Legacy Games, developer of mobile games for children, has just updated Crayola Color Blaster, an augmented reality Android adventure for Google Tango devices, with new content.
A market research report, posted on February 27, 2017, forecasts that the image recognition market will grow to nearly $40 billion worldwide by 2021. The market, which includes augmented reality applications, hardware, and technology, generated an estimated $15.95 billion in 2016. The report estimates the market to grow by a compound annual growth rate of 19.5% over the next five years.
Matteo Pisani, CTO and co-founder of Remoria VR, has managed to do something the folks over at Google said couldn't be done for at least a couple of years. With a little bit of tinkering, Pisani was able get his Google Daydream VR headset and remote to work on an iOS device.
As we slowly approach its January 3 start date, CES 2017 seems to be shaping up to be an exciting year for smart glasses as well as augmented and mixed reality.
This weekend, Atlanta, Georgia will be the battleground for a large group of HoloLens designers and developers. HoloHack, a 24-hour hackathon put on by elevator manufacturer ThyssenKrupp, will be taking place at The Garage, and the design theme will be smart cities.
China's e-commerce site Alibaba has been making heavy investments in augmented and mixed reality startups. In February of this year, they led a $793 million round of Series C financing of Magic Leap. And now they've just invested in Israeli-based InfinityAR, which acquired $18 million in its Series C financing.
Apple announced their new iPhones today, and the 7 Plus features two camera lenses on its backside. That could push smartphone photography ahead in a major way. It may also serve as the basis for their foray into virtual, augmented, and mixed reality.
We've heard a bit about Google Daydream—the new smartphone-based virtual reality platform that is supposed to provide a markedly better experience than Cardboard—but don't really know what it'll look like. Engadget claims we could find out in just a couple of weeks, since Android Nougat is already out, a necessary component of Daydream.
You've likely seen light-up musical keyboards that teach you how to play a song with visual cues, but few of those devices exist and have a limited number of songs you can actually learn. But Karl Baumann and his HoloLens Hackathon team figured out that in mixed reality, you can learn music with visual cues with any piano.
Virtual and mixed reality experiences feel immersive because they take over your senses in various ways, but they still lack tactile feedback. Haptic gloves can change that, and you can make a pair yourself.
If not the future of computing in general, augmented, virtual, and mixed reality certainly will change the world of gaming. If you want to try your hand at shaping this evolved medium, the Unite Europe conference posted a talk that explains the first things you need to learn to develop holographic games.
Most virtual and mixed reality headsets offer unnatural controls, making you use awkward movements or physical devices to control the holographic elements in your direct view. This doesn't make a lot of sense because using your hands is more natural, so Manus developed a set of gloves that solves that problem entirely.
While flying isn't easy, once an airplane gets into the clouds there isn't a whole lot to worry about—most of the work happens during takeoff and landing. Helicopter pilots, on the other hand, have a lot of dangerous obstacles (like power lines and buildings) to contend with. But, once again, augmented reality can save the day.
We started with a static page and evolved to dynamic screens, and making that 2D surface interactive was a relatively straightforward transition in design. But when you can put holographic objects literally anywhere in the room, the way you design apps, games, and experiences requires a different mode of thought entirely.
In the wake of Google Glass' failure, we can expect other companies to fill the void in due time. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Snapchat may be one of the first.
One of the major criticisms of virtual reality, and much modern technology in general, is the antisocial nature it creates. But vTime wants to overcome the isolating nature of VR headsets with a virtual hangout space for you and your friends.
Walking, talking, life-size holograms aren't just for staging Hatsune Miku concerts and reviving Tupac, Michael Jackson, and other fallen stars.
Developers across the U.S. and Canada have started getting their augmented reality headset packages from Microsoft, and so far, everyone's raving about one gaming experience that shatters all doubts of just what the HoloLens can do... RoboRaid.
Part of the mainstreaming of augmented reality is learning to adopt new habits around the hardware delivering these groundbreaking next-gen interface experiences.
Snapchat's first foray into augmented reality started with the selfie camera and face-tracking technology, with the app's AR capabilities expanding from there.
We often discuss the augmented reality efforts coming from the biggest players in Silicon Valley like Google, Facebook, Apple, and others, but one name that keeps coming up when you really begin to dig into the AR space is Vuzix. Since the late '90s, the company has quietly but deliberately worked to build itself into a viable competitor in the enterprise space via its wearable display technology.
The team over at Spatial isn't done innovating its way through augmented reality in 2020. Just days after adding a mobile option to its groundbreaking Spatial virtual collaboration product, the company is releasing Tele, a new app geared toward more casual, AR-powered video chats.
Unlike the realm of virtual reality, augmented reality is less about losing yourself in some fantasy environment, and more about getting things done in the real world. So while we've seen some great games that capture the imagination on devices like the Magic Leap One and the HoloLens, when it comes to real-world usage, the biggest developments coming for AR apps that are the more practical ones.
It's always fun to get an unexpected glimpse of the future, especially when that peek is so close you can actually feel the excitement of the new emerging dynamic.
The fight to wrest control of apps from Apple's revenue-focused grip just took a major turn in favor of Epic Games.
The US Department of Treasury isn't generally known for being on the very edge of technology innovations (see the current hubbub around crypto), instead usually waiting until certain tools have been battle-tested in the mainstream or enterprise sector.
The emergence of Microsoft's HoloLens 2 as a cutting-edge US Army tool has focused a spotlight on the marriage between augmented reality and the military.
After receiving $100 million in funding in 2018, smartglasses maker Rokid is going the crowdfunding route to finance its latest product.
It's all fun and games until the technology is actually put into use and you realize augmented reality is now part of Death Star.
The recent release of the Looking Glass Portrait has gotten the public excited about personal displays that simulate 3D visuals, but in the public display marketing space, this is an area that has already received a lot of attention.
For awhile now, Google has offered the ability to translate text through smartphone cameras via Google Translate and Google Lens, with Apple bringing similar technology to iPhones via Live Text.
During the Tuesday launch of Google I/O, the company's CEO, Sundar Pichai, pulled off a Steve Jobsian "one more thing" move near the end of his keynote address that was simply stunning.
The experience of actually using the HoloLens 2 can be difficult to describe to anyone who hasn't had a chance to directly interact with the device in person and be blown away by its immersive capabilities.
When most people think of Los Angeles they think of Hollywood and the movie industry, but in the last 10 years the city has rapidly transformed into a thriving new hub for visual artists.
With non-fungible tokens (NFTs), particularly those that are 3D in nature, holographic displays are becoming more indispensable for those looking to show off their valuable works of art.
In the three years since Snapchat launched Lens Studio, developers and artists have created more than 1.5 million AR camera effects with the desktop tool.
The past year has revealed a gaping hole of opportunity in the world of business called virtual meetings. Some existing players like Zoom hopped on that opportunity, while others like Skype seemed stuck on the sidelines, and Google Meet just managed to catch up in time to snag some of the shift in remote work.
The latest generation of Spectacles aren't AR smartglasses per se, but Snap is intent on demonstrating that the wearables are capable of storytelling powered by augmented reality.
In a previous tutorial, we were able to place the Mona Lisa on vertical surfaces such as walls, books, and monitors using ARKit 1.5. By combining the power of Scene Kit and Sprite Kit (Apple's 2D graphics engine), we can play a video on a flat surface in ARKit.
Over the years, Magic Leap's long-cultivated shroud of mystery led some onlookers to buy into the company's dream before even trying the device, while for others, the secrecy seems to have stoked the kind of resentment and overcorrecting critique usually reserved for the mighty Apple.
